Choosing to rent out your home can be a hard choice for many homeowners to make.
Times are tough in today’s economy. A lot of homeowners have to downgrade and move into smaller homes, leaving their present home up for sale. When selling doesn’t pan out, many homeowners look to rent.
However there are those who have investment properties still; a form of tangible retirement savings.
No matter the reason why you are renting out your property; a good quality tenant can help look after your investment
Some of qualifications to look for are verifiable income. Remember, income is any monies coming into the house; which includes but is not limited to, income from their job, food stamps, retirement benefits, or child/spousal support. A good rule of thumb is for total income to be equal to or greater than three times the rental amount.
Late payments, bounced checks, liens, default judgments, and bankruptcies will all show up on credit reports. Make sure you run credit on everyone who is going to be responsible for rent.
If they have rented before be sure to call their previous landlords. Ask if they paid their rent on time, how they kept the home, if they’ve moved, ask if they got their security deposit back.
If you are one of the lucky few owners who have too many qualified applicants, how do you decide who to rent to? One option is to evaluate how they’ve conducted themselves throughout the application process.
The following are some characteristics to be on the lookout for in a potential tenant:
* Arriving late to a scheduled appointment could mean they don’t value you or others valuable time. Their tardiness could trickle into their financial matters and they could be late with their rent.
* Potential tenants are very difficult to get a hold of. Messages left for them take several days to be returned. This could be your first indicator of hard to reach tenants. Maintenance issues arise with rentals; if your repair persons cannot get a hold of your tenants in a timely manner, the delay could create more extensive repairs to be required.
* If you get the opportunity to, take a look at the interior of their car. The condition is often an indicator of their cleaning habits, and can translate to the level of cleanliness they will keep inside your residence.
Renting out your property is a huge decision, and deciding who to rent your property to is an even bigger one. Hopefully this article has helped shed some light on such an important choice.
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